When treating and handling newborn babies and especially neonates, it is imperative that they are kept in life supporting conditions. These include maintaining the neonate in a steady appropriate temperature and providing a constant supply of fresh air, with an adequate percentage of the comprising gases.
In order to control the environment of neonates when in a care taking facility, they are usually kept in incubators where the physical conditions of the neonate and surroundings are controlled and monitored. Oxygenation, can be supplied through oxygen supplementation by head hood or nasal cannula, or even continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) or mechanical ventilation. In addition, it is important to recycle and circle air through the incubator to insure the appropriate concentration of the various comprising gases. In many times the circling air is humidified and/or used to heat the incubator.
In closed incubators, providing an optimal thermal environment is a priority not only for survival and growth but also for the stability of various physiological functions.
It was stated in the art that the most common way for regulating the heating of air circulating through an incubator is to control the power delivered to the heater. U.S. Pat. No. RE38,453 which is incorporated herein as a reference, discloses an infant incubator, constructed in accordance with the present invention, includes a hood having an access door in a wall thereof and a base upon which the hood is mounted and having a deck which with the hood defines an enclosure. The deck has openings through which air enters and leaves the enclosure. Also included in this incubator is a heater within the base for heating the air and a fan for supplying air to the heater and forwarding the heated air from the heater into the enclosure through at least one of the openings and for returning air from the enclosure to the heater through at least one of the openings. An infant incubator, constructed in accordance with the present invention, further includes sensing means responsive to movement of the access door for sensing when the access door is opened and control means responsive to the sensing means for increasing the heat generated by the heater and increasing the speed of the fan when the access door is opened. Similar technology is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,036,634 and 6,641,521 which are also incorporated herein as references. U.S. Pat. No. 6,511,414 which is also incorporated herein as a reference discloses a neonate's incubator in which thermo-regulated air flows upwardly from air inlet ducts in the base of the incubator, this flow is relatively noisy and can disturb the wellbeing of the neonate.
Noise is well-documented in the art to be a stress inducing factor for neonates that can hinder development. As published in Neonatal Network, 2009 28(3):165-173, by Brown G., titled: “NICU noise and the preterm infant”, preterm infants exposed to prolonged excessive noise are at increased risk for hearing loss, abnormal brain sensory development, and speech and language problems. Reducing noise levels in the NICU can improve the physiologic stability of sick neonates and therefore enlarge the potential for infant brain development. Apart from the disadvantage of being relatively noisy, the added mechanical parts comprising the known in the art solutions connected to the incubator, enlarge the total volume the incubator encompasses. This is not convenient in many imaging devices, such as magnetic resonance device or CT scanners in which the optimal imaging space is limited, and the precise location of the imaged patient is important for providing optimal images.
It is thus still a long felt need to provide an effective, safe, silent, MRI safe, vented and thermo-regulated neonate's environment, especially when intended for imaging systems.